Eyes of Psychosis
by LargeOstrich
Summary: A story in which the main character suffers from severe problems during a simulation.
1. Prologue

Beatrice POV

As I sit at our table, Susan across from me, Caleb next to me, my knees shake as I wait for my test. I am terrified of the result I will receive, and of how the test will be. As we are not permitted to prepare, I know nothing of how it will be conducted, and the subjects that will be covered. Should I have payed more attention in my Faction History class? Was it wrong of me to have enjoyed looking in the mirror when my mother was cutting my hair? I clench my hands tightly, so that Caleb will not see them trembling.

As we wait, the door of one of the testing rooms slams open, silencing the hall immediately. It is one at the end, which had been barriered off for years. Many rumours had circulated as to what lay inside this room but it is now clear. A large fearsome looking figure storms out the room, surging through the barriers. They were small and could in no way stand up to the force of him cannoning out of the doorway. I cannot see much of his body because, as he scans the room, the only thing I can see are his eyes. They instantly draw attention from everything else and overpower the room. They are deep and restless, and tell me instantly that whatever had been happening in that supposedly abandoned testing room, had scarred him. A grey clothed Abnegation assessor follows him, but he continues forward with an unstoppable force for the fire exit. The doors slam open, letting in a cool draft. The assessor, and two Erudite men and a large Candor woman follow out hurriedly.

As the doors close again, a murmur rises in the hall, but i am not part of it. My eyes are transfixed to the situation out the window as the boy, who must be about my age, forces a crowbar under the hood of a government truck. The boy points and shouts at the assessor and the engine bay of the truck, but is soon restrained by the large Candor woman. He continued to shout as he is dragged out of my view. I have forgotten completely about my upcoming test as I continue to stare blankly outside.

I still remember the determination and power of those deep psychotic eyes. I shall never be able to forget those and they shall haunt me for life.


	2. Chapter 1

/Two years previously

/Erudite 16 year old boy POV

As we enter the cafeteria, I realise the significance of these tests on my future. At Erudite, it was always taught to recognise the significance of events and actions. I was never really the type who paid attention in our classes. Erudite never felt comfortable to me either, and I knew in my heart that I had no particular intention to stay with my faction. Dauntless had always appealed to me, but at the same time I feel that Candor is respectable and something which I look up to. My sights, however, are firmly set on Dauntless. I long to be part of the group who thought nothing of jumping off moving trains. I knew that, to succeed, I would have to overcome my morbid fear of owls. My dear girlfriend had said to me that she will follow me no matter which path I take in this life. She is two years my younger, and hence is not taking the aptitude tests with me, but in two years time.

I sit down in the cafeteria, without food as my stomach has told me that I cannot. I sit dead still with the other Erudite boys, and pick up today's copy of the Morning Star. It is a thick newspaper, produced at Erudite headquarters, and I flick to the editorial and try to read. Try as I might, the words do not want to be read and I give up and move on to the picture section. A picture is shown of the red flag being piped up at last years Choosing Ceremony. This year it will be hosted at Amity headquarters, which means that it will be bright and jolly. I cannot bear to think of it, and cannot really think of anything other than my upcoming aptitude test. I know that it is impossible to fail, but my body is not convinced. I am petrified of what lies ahead, as if it will be final. The other Erudite boys are discussing an article heralding increased grain production on Amity farms, but I am to tense to join in. I sit in silence as they chat, their words bouncing off me. The chatter simply makes me more nervous.

The assessors are men and women, all from Abnegation apart from the two Amity men who are assessing the candidates from Abnegation. This is because the rules, which have been drilled into my feeble brain, state that the assessor may not be of the same faction as the candidate. This is obvious really, as an assessor could give a biased result to encourage a candidate to stay with their faction. The tests cannot be prepared for either so I do not know what to expect.

I am called up in the next batch of names. As I rise, my body instantly feels heavy and recalcitrant. My legs shake, so I lock my knees to hide it from my peers. I step slowly along to the end of our table, anticipation flowing through my veins. As I pace slowly down the aisle, I realise to my horror that it would help me had I listened to my teachers more, rather than daydreaming about the beach. An Abnegation boy who had just finished his test, passes me as he heads for the door. His eyes are heavy-set, and filled with terror. I look deep into his eyes and see and see walls closing in. I force my eyes away from his and to the door which I will pass through. Door 10.

The door at the far end.


	3. Chapter 2

/Direct continuation from previous chapter

As I finally pull open the door, I peer inside, before the assessor welcomes me in and introduces himself as Aaron. He is an Abnegation man, dressed in simple grey clothes, identical to all the other Abnegation. He instructs me to sit in the reclined chair. I notice all the walls are mirrored, but all this does is add to my paranoia. It begins to overwhelm me, but I control it. A large machine whirrs beside me, in a manner which suggests it is alive and watching me. I know it isn't, it can't see me, but the paranoia begins to rise again. My pulse quickens.

The assessor holds a large clump of electrodes on wires in his hand. He looks at a telescreen to his right, and then begins to attach the electrodes to various areas of my forehead and neck. as the first few are taped to my sweating forehead, the noise from the machine increased, in the way a detective hums to himself when he finds a particularly interesting piece of evidence. More beads of sweat drip down my forehead as I wonder whether anyone else can see me. See my terror. See my fear. my breaths rise and fall ever quicker. The electrodes are attached one by one and my skin tingles. My hands are clenched and numb.

When the last wires are attached, Aaron looks to the telescreen, pauses, then picks up a beaker. He pours from a glass jug a clear liquid. Its clarity terrifies me, as I know this liquid is not water, but as it is clear I cannot tell what it is and what it contains. He shakes it and stirs it, before slowly lifting it to the bright light. He lowers it before adding another different liquid. He quickly apologises to me that he had not done this before, but there had been a glitch in the machine last candidate's test. He passes the drink and my hand shakes, but I take it.

I tip the beaker to my mouth, and force the drink down.


	4. Chapter 3

/Under simulation

/Aptitude test

I wake back in the hall. It is now empty and silent. In front of me lie two baskets. The first contains a large slice of cheese. In the other lies a knife with a seven inch blade. I instinctively reach for the knife and it sits snugly in my palm. It feels powerful under my control. Behind me, a door creaks open. As I make eye contact, the dog snarls. I rotate my body, swing my arm, and the dog drops dead. Its body crashes to the ground. When I turn back, the baskets are gone.

I steady myself on the bus and grab a metal pole. Behind me a man reads a large newspaper, today's Morning Star. I recognise the fields of grain on the front. The man peers over and beckons me closer. He points to a face on the page and enquires as to whether I know that man. I tell him I don't, but he insists that if I did, I could save him. It suddenly strikes me that I do know this face, but I cannot put a name to that face. So, I tell him that the face is familiar.

The newspaper, the man and the bus fade, and I realise this simulation is over.

All that remains is blackness.

So dark.

Endless darkness.

I can see nothing around me.

And nothing of me.

And silence.

So much silence.

Shouldn't I have come round by now?


	5. Chapter 4

/Under simulation

I float cold, knowing not why I haven't come round yet. There must be a reason. I think back and remember that Aaron told me there had been a glitch in the machine. I cannot feel my body but I hear a voice. Or rather I hear a thought in my mind. It tells me that there has been an issue, and I realise that this must be the machine which I am hearing in my head. It gives me knowledge that I may be under suspension for two years. Two years conscious, but with nothing to do, nothing to think. The machine tells me it has a plan for what it will do. The message arrives in my head that it cannot talk, cannot play chess for the time I shall be here, or my brain will be a ball of senseless pulp.

The machine has an emergency plan. To make this seem real, it will feed me my own memories. I will not know I am being fed memories, I will see only the memories as if I am living them again. However, my memory will be modified so that I will not know that this is the second time. I have sixteen years of memories for the machine to use, and it will pick the clearest and most vivid to use for my time here.

I feel the ground beneath me and my world solidifies around me. School was tiring today and as always I struggled to learn anything. I had no clue how to integrate a complex polynomial. I couldn't remember where Nicaragua was. I had no idea when the great war ended and the factions were formed. I am not made for this life but my seventh birthday is in twenty days time. As I walk up the driveway I notice my father's car is not in the driveway. This is unusual as he is always home before me. A shiver runs up my spine as I realise that no-one is home because my parents have taken Georgina from across the road to hospital and have been unable to tell me.

I wait in the driveway for a while but I realise this is futile as Georgina's broken leg will mean that my parents will not be back until 7:37 PM and so I sit and cry. I lay my head on the wall and weep because I know that Georgina will need to be taken for a check-up appointment on her leg. My birthday will be cancelled. No, my birthday_ is _cancelled. My party is cancelled then I realise.

This isn't real.

If it was, I wouldn't know about Georgina's leg, and the time my parents would return, the check-up appointment, my birthday, my party.

So I get up and walk into the house through the wall, because the door is locked. Inside, the house is a mess, the walls are crumbling, and my father's treasured oil painting is unframed. It is tatty and dirty and the only thing still in the house. The edges are torn. He would be angry if he saw it like this, but it isn't real, so he won't be. My mother always said that if we ever ran out of money, we could sell it. The rotten timbers of this little shell anger me, so I swing the cricket bat and the house crumbles and collapses around me.

I stand in the rubble, my sixteen year old body unscathed, and look around into the unending darkness. Then the rubble disappears and I float again. Then, my body disappear altogether too.

It wasn't real.

Nothing is, nothing will be.


	6. Chapter 5

The machine swears. It didn't expect me to do that. This has happened before and no problem occurred. It thought I could live that memory. It thought I would survive. It thought I wouldn't know. But I did know. I ripped the simulation. I was neurotic enough to destroy an algorithm that had lasted without issue for a century. It concludes that, while it could have been me, it was most likely an error made by it. For this reason, it decides to try again.

I feel the ground beneath me and my world solidifies around me. School was tiring today and as always I struggled to learn anything. I had no clue how to integrate a complex polynomial. I couldn't remember where Nicaragua was. I had no idea when the great war ended and the factions were formed. I am not made for this life but my seventh birthday is in twenty days time. As I walk up the driveway I notice my father's car is not in the driveway. This is unusual as I know he is always home before me.

Except for today.

Because this time it strikes me quicker than all previous times and all future times that this isn't real, because I remember again. I remember Georgina, and my birthday, and my parents return. I remember yesterday, today, tomorrow, and my future, because I am sixteen again. So I do as I did before, and walk in. I do not require a bat to be called into existence, if a simulation can even be an existence, because this time I stroke the timbers of the house with my finger and my world collapses leaving the darkness again.

I know that I've done it again.

The times this has happened before I do not know, because I remember the past and future equally when under simulation.

I have destroyed the algorithm once again.

Because I know this wasn't real.

It is never real.

Was it ever real?

Is there even a 'real' or is nothing real?


	7. Chapter 6

The machine has removed me from the wreckage of the house, and tells me that it is struggling to stop me tainting my memories with the knowledge that they are not real. I am asked by the machine what I truly want, and I know that all I want now is to be back into reality. It is tiring spending weeks kept under simulation, and the repetition of memory upon memory has destroyed my sanity. All I can do now is hope they bring me back, back into reality.

The darkness fades, and colours wash into place. I wake on the chair, with Aaron standing over me. I have finally come round, and I am beyond happy. I am euphoric in my final return to reality. I leap up, but my muscles deny me and I flop on the floor. I raise my body up, but my withered legs only just support me. Aaron tells me that after this time in suspension I may take some time to readjust to life in reality. Aaron advises me to go home to help me catch up with the time I've missed. As I leave the room, I scan across the room and no-one notices me. I follow around the edge of the hall to the door into the corridor. The corridor is long and, as I walk to the other end, I think about what happened in reality while I was in the unreal. My family, my friends, my dear girlfriend, will all be two years older. There will have been changes, and the choosing ceremony will no longer be held at my home faction, Erudite, but at Abnegation. The whole Abnegation headquarters scares me. The grey is so identical that it reminds me of what I have just been through.

I look out of the window and see a car. I remember that car.

It was there the day I went into the simulation. And the headmasters kitten is still on the roof. And still a kitten.

2 years sure as hell hasn't passed if that kitten hasn't grown, or even moved.

I lean on the window and a tear drops to the sill. It isn't real. I have been tricked once again, and this is the harshest trick of all. To think i have returned and then find reality behind a thin veil of the unreal. I know this isn't real so I press harder and slip through the window like it isn't there. The street is cold, but I do not shiver because the unreal does not faze me.

I see a government truck on the other side of the road, and the crowbar is in my hand ready. The hood is up but the bay is empty. The whole truck is an empty shell. Like my house and all I tried to remember. In my fury I hurl the crowbar at the elevated railway, and everything collapses around me. The dust rises and just as this world came, it washes away again.

Shit, the machine said to itself.


	8. Chapter 7

I wake once again and everything washes into place, but after months of repetition I know that this isn't reality, because it never is. For me, reality has terminated, and now I live in the unreal. I will never leave this world of nonexistence, because reality will be too much for my boredom-addled brain to comprehend. I surge out of the chair with a practised balance and shout at Aaron and the other people, scientists presumably given they wear blue, in the room. I show him that he is not himself, not the real Aaron, but an augmentation in the machine, in me, and that he is not real, not in existence, a simulated him not a real him. He tells me to calm as he always does, all the times, every time, but I place my hand on the wall and push and show him it is not real, because my hand, as always has gone through, and in reality, hands don't go through walls. He does not scream as sometimes, but denies it. He, no, it tries to convince me this is real, but I know otherwise, because reality is not real, it never was, and never will be for me, because it ended when I went under.

I kick the door open, and surge into the hall. I have no need to take the corridor as I know that this is unreal, so I crash through the barriers and slam into the fire exit. For once the government truck has moved, but with my usual swift motion the hood is up. I know that there is nothing beneath the hood and that the truck is an impossible empty shell. Everything here is an empty shell in this impossible world, a world which is not real, and never can be real. I am aware that I am shouting my well-worn words at Aaron to show him there is nothing as I always do. My shouting continues as I am restrained by a Candor woman. It hurts with a pain that tells me this must be real. But it can't be, can it?

I was a young Erudite. I was Edward. But now, I am nothing. I am not real.


	9. Epilogue

/Beatrice POV

The Abnegation volunteers are spreading out. They have syringes. One for each of us. One for the boy outside. I will never forget those eyes. Their needles are sharp and glint in the morning is barely a drop of the liquid in their syringes. They move along the rows, bodies going limp as the syringes get pressed. Finally they reach me. I feel no pain from the needle.

Then all goes dull.

I wake up. I must've fallen asleep waiting for my test. Then my name is called and I get up.

But I remember those eyes.


End file.
